CHAPTER I

Across Bryant Park, chilled and damp under a gray sky emptied of stars, a man hurried. His overcoat collar was turned up. His soft hat was pulled down. His eyes between the two were dark-circled and deep-sunk. His feet covered the wet paths with the stumbling haste of one pursued.

To the east the faint gold streaks of an autumn dawn cut the clouds. They reached up above the irregular skyline that is New York, heralding the day some minutes after it was born.

The man sped across Fortieth Street and mounted the steps of one of the few brownstone houses, relic of an old aristocracy, that refused to be crowded out by the bourgeoisie of business. He fumbled in his coat pocket, brought out a key, dropped it in his anxiety, finally got the inner door open and made his way, still stumbling, up the stairs.

At an apartment on the second floor—for the house maintained its aloof air of aristocracy only on the outside—he paused and squared his shoulders. His whole body seemed to steel itself and then, very softly, he inserted the key and entered.

A gentle rustle came from the room beyond and a trained nurse with finger against her lips met him on the threshold.

“She—she’s all right?” he whispered, lips twitching.

“Sleeping.”

“I tried to get back earlier. We rehearsed until a few minutes ago.” He threw hat and overcoat on a chair and sank into another. His head went down into his hands. “God, those hours, when every minute I thought—Miss Anderson,” he broke off, looking up to catch her expression, “she hasn’t taken a turn for the worse! She’ll pull through, won’t she?”

She smiled, a little sadly, at the desperate, so familiar query.

“She’s holding her own,” she answered with the formula equally familiar.

“Can’t you tell me she’ll get well? Can’t you give me the assurance?”

“No one can do that, Mr. Moore. We can only wait and hope.”

She took a hesitant step toward him, hand outstretched to comfort. Then evidently realizing how futile such effort would be, she turned and went back to her place at the foot of the bed that was a misty blur in the darkened room beyond.

He followed, precipitately yet with scarcely the sound of a footfall. The room was full of shadows. A thread of sunlight, forcing its way between blind and window, crept across the floor and gradually toward the bed. But Frank Moore did not need its delicate finger-touch to illumine the face that lay so still upon the pillow. He knew every precious line of it, every contour, all the shades of modeling that made it exquisite even though disease had in a few short weeks pressed into a gaunt mask the curves of beauty. He stood looking down at its stillness until a sudden broken cry came from him and he went quickly into the other room.

With no shame for his man’s tears, he flung himself full length on the couch and gave way to the misery he must hide when the wistful gaze of the eyes he loved was on him. Long days of rehearsal, long nights of anxiety, had weakened his resistance. He lay shaking with all the pitiable helplessness of the strong man gone under.

On side streets and flashing under the reflectors on the big twenty-four sheets along Sixth Avenue was his name in prominent black letters.

Kane Theatre 45th Street beginning _November 5th_

OSWALD KANE Presents the New Drama “THE LAUREL WREATH” by _Gaston Grisac_ Featuring FRANKLYN MOORE

How often they had dreamed of the day when he and she could look up and see that name as it stood out now, heralded, the featured one of the season’s big production! How often had she pictured herself stopping to read it each time it loomed before them, scanning it over and over on her theater program, leaning beyond the rail of the stage box to spur him to the success that must be his!

And to-night—the night that was to have been the greatest in their life, she would be lying there, while he— He sprang up, with quick stride covered the floor, back and forth, back and forth, like a prisoner in a cell.

The day nurse arriving at seven, found him dazed and blank-eyed from sheer weakness. As one feeds a child, she made him swallow some steaming coffee, then led him without difficulty back to the couch.

“You must rest, Mr. Moore, or you won’t be equal to the performance to-night.”

“I—can’t.”

“But if I promise to call you when Mrs. Moore wakes up, won’t you try to sleep a bit?”

“I can’t, I tell you!”

“Please—”

She plumped up the pillows and he fell back among them, exhausted. He did not sleep but a sort of numbness gripped him as if the blood had been drained from his veins. And while his body lay still, his mind moved with wonder. Ambition—hope—of what use? To-day for him, this day that was to make all the days to come, there was just one reality. That face in there with its lines of suffering, that frail body, that soul that must live on for him. Nothing else was worth a thought—nothing! All night long as he had rehearsed, perfecting under the subtle guidance of Oswald Kane, the minutest detail of characterization, the most delicate shading of the difficult rôle he had mastered, he had been standing in reality at her bedside. Like a well-ordered mechanism he had gone through the part. But the indeterminate something that was Franklyn Moore had been in that shadowy room—with her. Kane had noticed the lack. An anxious frown had drawn his expressive brows momentarily together. But he had said nothing until the dress rehearsal was over and the company had gone home to sleep in preparation for the night’s performance. Then he had linked his arm through Moore’s and drawn him into the darkness of the wings.

“Frank, I know this is an ordeal for you. If there were any way of postponing the opening, I would do it. You know that. But it can’t be managed. We’re all set. They could only conclude that something was wrong with the play.”

“Of course—I know. That’s all right.”

“And, my boy, we can’t afford to let it fail because of this—this misfortune that has come to you. It’s on your shoulders. We must come through, Frank. We can’t stand a failure.” His anxiety was all too evident.

“I was rotten—I know. But don’t worry—”

“I won’t. I depend upon you, my boy, that’s all. And so does to-night’s success. Let me run you home.”

“Thanks—no. I’d rather walk it. Want to be alone—you understand—pardon!”

And he had stumbled out of the stage door into the new gray day.

Now as he paced up and down, he wondered whether it would be humanly possible to keep faith with the man who was giving him the opportunity to blazon his name to the world. Could he go through with it? Could he be depended upon?

The nurse appeared in the doorway and beckoned to him. From the pillow a pair of eyes, so large and dark that there seemed no other feature in the small face, fastened on the door as he entered. He dropped on his knees, laid his head beside hers. One hand strayed up and stroked his thick brown hair.

“How did it go, darling?”

He answered with another question of greater moment.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Much. They gave me something to make me sleep. I must have slept a long time. Is it morning?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“Really? What time did you get in?”

“About half-past five.”

“How did the rehearsal go?” she repeated.

“Fine. Kane thinks it will be a knock-out.”

“I’m sure it will.”

He turned his face from hers for an instant of silence.

The nurse moved about the room, lifting the blinds to the sunlight, preparing it for the day. Then she came over to the bed.

“As soon as I have Mrs. Moore fixed up, I’ll let you come back,” she said.

“You’ll let him tell me all about it, won’t you?” pleaded the voice from the pillow. “I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t.”

“Yes—he can stay in here until—”

“Until he’s ready to go to the theater. Please—please!”

“If you don’t wear yourself out.”

“I won’t—I promise.”

The big dark eyes followed him out of the room.

He stripped off his clothes, took a cold shower and in clean linens tried to persuade himself that he felt relaxed. He telephoned the doctor for a report on last night’s visit and was told Mrs. Moore was about the same. If she had gained some sleep that was decidedly in her favor. The doctor would be over at five and as Mr. Moore had requested, would make arrangements to stay until his return from the theater.

The small face on the pillow was lifted eagerly as he reappeared. Two long braids of pale gold fell over the shoulders and onto the white spread. He had always adored that pale gold hair. It intensified the dark of her eyes, making them almost black. It made her mediæval, an Elaine of poetry. He called her “Elaine” which after all was not so very far from her own name, “Helen.”

“No, I want you here.” She pointed to the foot of the bed. “Where I won’t miss a word or an expression. Now tell me—about everything.”

In a low voice, without stress or excitement, he related the incidents that always occur at a dress rehearsal. Props that had to be replaced at the last minute. The leading woman’s gowns gone wrong. The house cat sauntering across the stage during the big scene and its portent, good luck! Kane’s decision to light him with white instead of amber in the final act. All the little shadings, the quaint superstitions, the unimportant incidents that make the stage the fascinating realm it is, even to the initiated.

She listened with lips parted and an occasional faint nod of the head. It was her world, too, though the world in which she had failed.

“I hope you weren’t too good, dear.”

“I was rotten.”

Her smile said she knew he couldn’t be that, but the lips told him:—

“That’s good. A bad dress rehearsal is sure to mean a great opening.” A sudden longing, uncontrolled, held her eyes. “How I’d love to see it!”

He bent down, lifted one of the white hands on the coverlet, pressing it against his lips.

“I don’t know how I can go through without you,” came in spite of him.

Her eyes clouded.

“You must, dear! You mustn’t even think of me.”

“It’s too much to ask,” the broken voice plunged on. “To go out and face that crowd with you—here! I can’t do it—I can’t!”

“You must do it, my love.” The spirit so much stronger than the body shone from her eyes. “I’ll be thinking of you and praying for you. I’ll be with you all through the performance. I’ll follow each line—every tiny bit of business. But you must put me out of your mind. Only your part must count—only your success.”

He was silent, pressing the little hand between his warm palms as if to send the vitality from his veins into hers. But the only vitalized part of her was the feverishly bright look of eyes that drew his.

“Frank—”

“Yes, darling—”

“You know how I always loved the stage—how I always wanted to be a great actress.”

“I know, my Elaine.”

The big burning eyes traveled into the past. Haltingly, with breath uneven and the words only faintly spoken, she drifted on the tide of memory back toward that horizon of hope so many see but never reach.

“Frank—do you remember in the old stock days when we first met—how jealous I was of you?”

“Nonsense! You were just ambitious.”

“No—jealous! Don’t you remember the time I wouldn’t speak to you for a week—because you walked off with the big scene?”

“Mine was the better part.”

Two tears she pretended not to be conscious of gathered in the dark eyes.

“No, dear—it wasn’t in me. You tried to give it back to me—that scene—at every performance.” Her voice trailed away a little wearily and it was a full minute before the slow words came to her lips again. “But I couldn’t take it away from you, no matter how hard I tried.”

She had carried him with her back to the days of struggle and hope, when success was a star at the top of the world and effort the ladder from which so many rungs fell away as climbing feet sought a firmer hold. The days when disappointments were shared with after-theater sandwiches and the monument of ambition took the form of a dingy stock theater on the Main Street of a small town.

“And I felt like such a dog,” he reminisced. “That was when I began loving you—when I was trying to heal the hurt of your disappointment. That night when you walked out of the stage door in the pouring rain and your umbrella turned inside out and I tried to make you take my raincoat but you poked up that little head of yours and looked neither to right nor left like a real Mrs. Siddons. And then an old cab came jogging along and I scooped you up bodily and carried you into it, broken umbrella and all. Do you recall how I held you in my arms all the way to your boarding-house and kept telling you you had to marry me?”

“Take me in your arms now, dear. Let’s live those days over again.”

He looked, anxiously yet with an eager plea in his eyes, toward the nurse. She hesitated.

“Frank,” came the voice from the pillow, “won’t you put your arms around me?”

The nurse nodded, coming quickly to the bed. She slipped her own arm under the wasted body, lifted it. Then the man’s went in its place and silently he cradled the precious burden against him, bending down so that her position might not be changed. She gave a little sigh as his lips touched the silk of her hair.

“I feel better now,” she said.

They were quiet a few moments while the man’s eyes fastened blindly on a cornice of the ceiling.

Her slim fingers curled round his.

“We both love the theater so, don’t we?”

“Yes—” But he was not thinking of her words.

“Only I never had it, dear,—the spark. It is a spark—”

“You have the greatest spark in the world, darling,—the love that you give and inspire—that will live on when the theater has forgotten me.”

“It must never forget you.” She stopped, then softly went on, “I—I wanted so much for myself—at first. I could learn lines and be letter perfect in a few days—and look pretty.”

“You were always beautiful. You always will be.”

She gave a little tired movement of dissent.

“It doesn’t matter much—because—because—anyway—”

“I love you so,” he said in a shaking voice.

“I used to tell myself the other thing—the spark—would come. It took New York to teach me that if you have the other thing—looking pretty and being letter perfect in a few days aren’t important. But Frank—”

“Yes, sweetheart—”

“I didn’t marry you because I was a failure. I married you because I loved you.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

“But I want to. Do you want me to tell you just when I knew I loved you?”

“Yes.”

She had told it to him dozens of times but he waited with the eager attention of one who had never before heard it.

“Well, it was the time we both opened in ‘The Jungle-Beast.’ I had just come to New York. You’d been here six months. But I was too proud to let you know because I couldn’t get a job and was half starved. And then we met one day—in Cleeburg’s office—and you made him give me a part.”

“He’d have given it to you without me.”

“He would not. It was you who managed me. The best manager in the world,” she murmured.

He had an insane impulse to clutch her tighter, hold her so that no power on earth or in heaven could drag her from him. But the muscles of his arms merely tightened without movement. She lay within them, a weight too pitifully light.

“When we opened,” came at last, whispered so that the words were a breath, “I tried so hard—I put every bit of me into the part.”

“And you were great in it, too.”

“No, the papers told the truth. I just—wasn’t. They didn’t even mention my name—I was just an also-ran. But Frank—I was so happy—so proud. My own failure didn’t count. That was when I knew I loved you, dear,—belonged to you—for always.”

“For always,” he repeated like an amen.

“No matter what happens?”

“No matter—” he could not go on.

She lay there with eyes closed and a smile on her lips. A faint pink like the touch of sunset spread its delicate color on her cheeks. But only for the moment that had carried her into the past. When the eyes opened and looked up to his, they were troubled.

“What is it, my Elaine?”

“Frank—since then I’ve poured all my ambition into you. All these seven years—each step of yours up the ladder has been mine. And we have been happy—every minute of them, haven’t we?”

He put his inarticulate lips against her forehead.

“Nothing can take that away. It’s ours—forever. It’s more than life gives most people. And I’m not a real failure, because my longing has been satisfied—in you.” The clouded eyes struggled to his. “Come closer, dear. That’s why you mustn’t fail to-night. Tell me you won’t.”

“But the thought of leaving you—it—it’s too much. I can’t stand it!”

“You must, Frank! Everything depends on it.”

“Do you think anything that matters there—will count?”

“But if I want you there instead of here—if it means everything to me?”

Her fingers twined feverishly through his. Her eyes were frightened. Her voice gathered sudden strength.

“I want to spur you to triumph, darling, not defeat. I want you to ring the bell, so that—always—I can know I was a help not a hindrance.”

“Elaine—you mustn’t talk any more. You’re tired.”

“No—I’m not. Let me tell you the thing I want to say. You can’t serve two masters, dear, the theater and me. You love us both—but to-night the theater must come first. It is your master—mine, too. You must let it take you away from me when you want to stay. You must let it absorb you—mind and body. You must forget that I’m ill—forget me while I’m remembering you. No matter what happens! Frank—promise me—”

“I can only—try.”

Her two hands clung to his.

“That’s not enough! Frank—I’d die now if I thought I was going to cause you to fail. You must appear—you must make good. You must do the best work of your career. After all, that will be serving me too, darling. You’ll be giving me the thing I want—your name the greatest on the American stage. No matter what happens, Frank—no matter what—”

The nurse moved quickly to the bedside.

“I can’t let Mr. Moore stay if you excite yourself. Take this—and please lie quiet for awhile.”

“You won’t make him go?”

“Not if you do as I say.”

She took the powder and, closing her hands round his to reassure herself, settled back on the pillow. He remained in his cramped position, half kneeling, half lying beside her, filling his eyes with her, listening for every faint even breath that told him sleep had once more laid relaxing fingers upon her. Like a miser counting gold, he counted the minutes that gave them to each other, the minutes before the master she said he must obey claimed him. He heard those minutes being ticked away by the clock in the adjoining room with a terror that laid cold hands on his heart. The day must not go! It must not escape them so quickly!

Once more he put his head down beside the pale gold one. For a long time neither moved. Then the faint grip of her fingers loosened, dropped away. But his arms stayed about her, numbed and tense.

She awoke and lay smiling into his eyes, but neither made attempt to speak. Sometimes he whispered her name. Sometimes she murmured his. All the words that could have been spoken—all that he wanted to pour out—all that he felt—choked him. But the futility of trying to express it and the fear of weakening her held him silent. Theirs was a communion deeper than speech.

It was late afternoon when she lifted her head, a sudden light illumining her spent eyes.

“Frank—have they got your name on that billboard we can see from the front window?”

“Yes, beloved.”

“Big?”

“Yes.”

“Almost as big as Kane’s?”

“Yes, little lady of mine.”

“Frank—I want to see it.”

He started up with protest on his lips, but—

“Impossible!” formed on the nurse’s before he could speak.

“Please, Frank!”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do, dear.”

“If you’d wrap me in a blanket and carry me in. Just for a second—just to see it—once.”

“Mrs. Moore,” the nurse put it, “it doesn’t seem much and I’d like to say ‘yes.’ But it would weaken you too much.”

“No—no! It wouldn’t—it couldn’t! Why—it’s the thing I’ve been waiting for! It would give me new life. I want to see his name all lighted up. Please—please! Don’t deny me just this little thing.”

Frank Moore’s gaze went desperately to the nurse’s. She stood locking and unlocking her hands, nervous uncertainty battling with professional caution.

“We’ll wait until Dr. Griffith gets here. If he permits it—”

With gaze fastened on her, Frank Moore knew that she was certain the doctor would not permit it. Yet when he came at five and the dark eyes went quickly to his with their anxious plea, he stood looking down at them for a moment, prolonged by silence—then bowed his head in quiet assent.

The man who had been watching did not stop to question or consider why. He saw only the light that like white fire came again to the eyes he loved. Gathering her close, with head bent to hers, he carried her to the window that faced the park.

Dusk with its faint blue haze of beauty had settled and through it glimmered the first sparkle of the evening star. A building off toward Broadway, mysteriously illuminated from below, glowed moonwhite and dreamlike. The city itself, at this weird hour between day and night, seemed scarcely real. But it was not on the unreality of material things that the dark eyes centered. Over the park they wandered and above the long black trellis of the elevated.

There it was, shining beyond its reflectors, the big twenty-four sheet:—

Kane Theatre 45th Street beginning _November 5th_

OSWALD KANE Presents the New Drama “THE LAUREL WREATH” by _Gaston Grisac_ Featuring FRANKLYN MOORE

She gave a little joyful sigh.

“Frank dear—it’s real—it’s real!”

Her arms held closer round his neck.

“I’ve asked Kane to keep your place vacant in the stage box,” came from him finally. “I couldn’t bear to have anyone else in it.”

“I’ll be with you—rooting for you—don’t forget! I’ll be with you—always.”

He put his face against hers. He could not speak. Through the dusk he saw only those great dark eyes with their strange glowing light. He stood with her so, while she read and re-read the name that spelled to her love, ambition, life. Suddenly—

“I can’t leave you—I can’t!” he broke down.

“’Sh! You must go on and on, darling. Remember,—don’t try to serve two masters. You will remember—won’t you? For me?”

Their eyes held.

“Yes,” came from him.

“And Frank—”

“Yes, my Elaine—”

“Kiss me.”